The ramblings of one home-brew electronics, firmware engineer and pilot.

Monday, April 21, 2014

Si570 Programming continued...

As previously mentioned, I held two possible interpretations of the datasheet regarding what is meant by how far the DCO frequency could be moved without restarting it. My initial belief was that as long as no single change was more than 3500 ppm plus or minus that you could move it over the entire DCO range. This turns out to be false. You re-establish what the datasheet calls the "centre frequency" when you recalculate the RFREQ, HSDIV and N1 values and set them to the device. A closer examination of the datasheet revealed the following:As shown in Figure 3, the device allows reprogrammingof the DCO frequency up to ±3500 ppm from the centerfrequency configuration without interruption to theoutput clock. Changes greater than the ±3500 ppmwindow will cause the device to recalibrate its internaltuning circuitry, forcing the output clock to momentarilystop and start at any arbitrary point during a clock cycle.This re-calibration process establishes a new centerfrequency and can take up to 10 ms. Circuitry receivinga clock from the Si57x device that is sensitive to glitchesor runt pulses may have to be reset once therecalibration process is complete.

So, it is in fact this recalibration process that establishes the new centre frequency. This has been verified by experimentation.From this I conclude there is a small frequency change procedure and a large frequency change procedure. If the DCO frequency is changed no more than +/- 3500 ppm from the last centre frequency the a simple ratio multiplier is applied according to the following formulae:

Once a new RFREQ value (38 bits) is calculated, it is written to the Si570 device. Since several registers must be rewritten, even with tiny changes in the RFREQ value these changes can affect the DCO frequency while the set of registers are being updated. The Si570 provides a bit (register 135 bit 5) that can prevent this behaviour. Setting this bit to 1 before changing the RFREQ registers and then resetting it will allow the output frequency to change in a single phase continuous step to the new frequency.When changing the DCO frequency by more than +/- 3500 ppm, several steps are involved. Firstly, new values must be calculated for the HSDIV and N1 divisors. Given the new desired output frequency, you must find the frequency divider values that will keep the DCO oscillation frequency in the range of 4.85 to 5.67 GHz.To help minimize the device's power consumption, the divider values should be selected to keep the DCO's oscillation frequency as low as possible. The lowest value of N1 with the highest value of HS_DIV also results in the best power savings. Since there are many solutions for a given output frequency, it is useful for power sensitive applications to pay attention to these details.Once the divisors have been calculated, a new RFREQ value is determined according to the following formulae:

The new values are written to the device as follows:

Freeze the DCO by setting bit 4 of Register 137

Write the new frequency configuration by setting RFREQ, HSDIV and N1 new values to the appropriate registers.

Unfreeze the DCO and assert the NewFreq bit without exceeding the timeout specified in Table 11 of the Si570 datasheet. (Register 135, bit 6).

The DCO output clock will momentarily stop and start at a completely arbitrary point in the clock cycle and can take up to 10 ms to complete with the expected assortment of glitches and runt pulses such behaviour would indicate. If your downstream circuitry is sensitive to this nonsense, you may need to provide a reset mechanism to recover.I find that the output waveform is basically a square wave signal. On my device at least there is a bit of overshoot on the square wave signal both positive and negative at least at lower frequencies. As I go higher in frequency, the waveform becomes more triangular in shape. I will post oscilloscope traces of this behaviour later as my scope is a bit tied up right at the moment with another project.More to come...

2 comments:

I'm just wondering if I am the only experimenter to notice a sudden case of output decrease over time from a SI570? Haven't had a chance to replicate it yet, but at least once I have had evidence of a 30% output level drop from an overnight run on the bench. This was proceeded by a long slow (over weeks of intermittent operation and manipulation of output coupling circuitry ) ,accompanied by a steady case temperature decline on the 570. Anyone else had to change a 570 due to output sag? App: 16Mhz Repeater RX synth >slow steady output decay<DWFComm@aol.com KA4CNP

I have not seen the output decline, but I have seen the output being quite sensitive to the amount of solder flux under the chip. I have always done an ultrasonic cleaning of the boards once all soldering is complete and that has resolved the matter for me. Perhaps it is related to your issue?